


First Words

by howitfeelstoloveagirl



Series: Tumblr Prompts [1]
Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Gen, i really like the potential for a svetlana/mickey friendship, in which svetlana see's mickey's pain and tries to help, my personal headcanon, shes not the big bad wolf the fandom can make her out to be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-19
Updated: 2014-06-19
Packaged: 2018-02-05 07:37:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1810507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/howitfeelstoloveagirl/pseuds/howitfeelstoloveagirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt from tumblr: "svetlana and mickey's first """real""" conversation probably around 3x12"</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Words

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to my tumblr (mckmilkovch.tumblr.com).
> 
> Set a few weeks after the wedding.

Svetlana had seen her fair share of bad men. She’d seen men who hit their children, men who hit their wives. Men who drank too much and cared too little. She’d also seen a great deal of sad men. Men crippled by loss, by poverty, by disease or by life itself. Men who took to the bottle because they cared too much.

Her own father had been both a bad man and a sad man. The loss of his wife had broken him beyond repair. He’d quit his job at the lumberyard to tend to his full time career of as an alcoholic, and when money grew tight he’d sold his oldest daughter to America to be a whore. At least Svetlana’s younger siblings hadn’t been hungry anymore.

Terry Milkovich was a bad man. She’d known since the first time he’d came to her Spa. She’d smiled through thin lips at his racist and homophobic jokes, and the graphic depictions of the violent acts he’d committed against those he deemed one of God’s mistakes. Svetlana knew which kind of men were really God’s mistakes. She saw them every day as they paid her too little in exchange for what they took from her.

Mickey Milkovich was not a bad man. He thought he was, and he tried to be, but Svetlana saw right through it. He was just a boy, a sad boy, whose heart was too soft for the life his father was carving out for him. A life of violence and hatred, of misogyny and white supremacy.

Svetlana had seen how Mickey loved that boy. How he’d lay down with her because he loved that boy. It had been so wrong, so horrible, that day. A day nobody but Terry had gone to sleep without tears on their cheeks.

There he was, her husband, sitting on the couch nursing a bottle of whiskey. He never went to bed with her, he always waited until he thought she was asleep before lying down as far away from her as possible.

“I do not know what to name baby”, She said to him. “I thought, maybe after my father. It is a family name, passed down for generations.”

“Ever since the great days of communism, dictators, and starving children.” He said sarcastically.

She paused. “Maybe not so different from this house.” He laughed before taking another sip from his bottle.

“You know, I think this is our first conversation.” She said.

“Maybe our last, too.”

She smiled sadly. He still would not meet her eyes. “You know, Michael, I am not the enemy.” He stayed silent, staring at his lap. She didn’t need him to say anything, just to hear her.

She headed back towards the bedroom, pausing in the doorway. “You can come to bed now.” She said softly. “Now, later, whenever. I don’t expect anything of you before… before we sleep. What happened that day won’t happen again.”

As she was setting her alarm and fiddling with the pillows he came in quietly, kicking off his shoes and sliding into bed. Without words, Svetlana clicked off the lamp. They weren't touching, but they weren't quite so far apart anymore.


End file.
